


Call the Doctor

by i_am_still_bb



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Halloween, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27282280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_still_bb/pseuds/i_am_still_bb
Summary: Fili and Kili have a campout on Halloween. They tell scary stories and eat cookies.---Written for the Tale Teller’s Fright Night 2020 (song: Witch Doctor, movie: Sweeney Todd)
Relationships: Fíli & Kíli (Tolkien)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Call the Doctor

As soon as the final bell rings Fili has his backpack swinging from one hand and his jacket dangling from the other. The Elementary school had let out thirty-five minutes earlier, which meant that Kili would already be home from school and waiting for Fili. He probably has a bit of toast and a cup of hot apple cider.

Fili kicks at the piles of leaves along the edges of the sidewalk and listens to them crinkle and crunch pleasantly beneath his sneakers. The trees had lost most of their leaves, and there had even been a few flurries the previous weekend, but Fili is determined that his plan be followed.

Trick-or-treating had been yesterday, but the houses along his street are still decorated with fake cobwebs and pumpkins. Kili had woken up with a fun-sized candy bar melted in his fist. Their mother had not been pleased because not only did Kili need a bath before school, but his bedding had needed to be laundered. 

Once through the front door—the door soundly slammed behind him—Fili drops his backpack on the floor and kicks off his school shoes.

“Kili!” he shouts as he hangs up his jacket.

“Indoor voice, dear!” his mother shouts back from the kitchen. 

Fili follows his mother’s voice, music, and the smell of cookies into the kitchen.

_ I told the witch doctor _

_ I was in love with you _

_ And then the witch doctor _

_ He told me what to do _

Dis is wearing a Halloween apron that has flour smeared across the front. There is also a white handprint on her thigh; it is distinctly Kili sized. 

Dis and Kili are dancing. Kili has a chef’s hat precariously balanced on his head. 

“C’mon, Fili!” Kili grins. 

_ He said that _

_ Ooo eee, Ooo ah ah, ting tang _

_ Walla walla, bing bang _

_ Ooo eee, Ooo ah ah, ting tang _

_ Walla walla bing bang… _

“Dance with us!” Kili giggles when Dis whips him around in a circle.

Kili has a blob of orange frosting on the end of his nose.

Dis holds her hand out. “Fili?” 

Fili leans against the doorway and shakes his head. 

“Mom!” Kili shrieks when Dis spins him again. 

Then the song is over and both of them are left breathless.

“Again!” Kili shouts.

“Not just now, dearheart,” Dis says. She exhales and smiles. “You have more cookies to frost.”

Kili turns back to the counter and the cookies waiting to be frosted and sprinkled.

“How was school?” Dis asks. She tugs Fili into a half-hug and drops a kiss on the top of his head.

“Fine.” Fili fixes his hair where his mother ruffled it. “Can we have some cookies for our campout?”

“Of course!

“Kili, why don’t you run along and get things set up with your brother?”

Kili turns and there he has a knife covered with frosting in his mouth. A smudge of black frosting has joined the orange.

* * *

“Just grab the blue tarp,” Fili instructs from the bottom of the ladder where he is holding it steady.

“This one?” Kili asks.

“No. The one on top of it.”

Kili stretches onto his tiptoes—Fili’s grip on the ladder tightens as a twist of fear grips him—and points to another tarp. “This one?”

“Yes, but go up one more step.”

Kili reaches for the tarp, but he does not follow Fili’s last instruction. He stretches out again, the toes of his red sneakers on the edge of the ladder rung. 

“Kili…” Fili says in warning.

“What?” Kili asks as he tugs at the tarp with his fingertips. It tumbles free and falls to the floor beside them. “Got it.”

“Next time go up one higher,” Fili says when Kili’s feet are solidly on the cracked concrete floor of the garage.

Kili shrugs and grabs the tarp. He looks expectantly at Fili.

Fili sighs and grabs the strap of his tent bag and a mallet. 

Together they clear the back corner of the yard of leaves and sticks. The sticks are tossed into the brick fire ring. They stretch out the blue tarp and unroll the tent. They get the poles in place eventually, but not without some bickering. They start tying and staking the rain fly in place. Fili carefully checks all of Kili’s knots as they go. They have certainly improved over his knots from the previous spring. 

Kili’s eyes are wide when he looks at Fili expectantly. “What now?”

Fili raises his eyebrows, prompting Kili to answer his own question.

“Sleeping bags!”

Fili squats by the brick fire ring. He pulls the large sticks out and sets them aside and begins building a teepee with small sticks with the smallest going in the middle. Some dry leaves and wood shavings that he makes with his pocket knife go in the middle. He’s just finishing when the backdoor of the house bangs against the siding and Kili comes out with his arms full of sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets.

He walks slowly and peers at the ground from around the mound, careful not to drop anything until he reaches the tent.

Instead of laying out the sleeping bags side by side Kili covers the floor of the tent with blankets and pillows to create a space where they can sprawl.

Fili sparks a flame and carefully feeds small sticks into the tiny, flickering flame. 

“Here,” Kili says dropping down beside Fili and holding out a plaid, flannel jacket that is lined with fleece.

“Thanks.”

Kili nods and draws his knees to his chest. He leans against Fili’s arm and watches as the fire grows larger. Kili’s wool sweater is scratchy against Fili’s bare arm.

“How’s it going,” Dis asks when she finds them a while later. Fili is tending the fire and Kili is lying in the tent with a comic book.

Fili smiles. “It’s not too windy.”

“That’s good.” She places the plastic container of cookies on the ground next to Fili.

“Are you sure you don’t need some real supper?” she asks, hands on her hips.

Fili laughs. “What do you think, Kili? Do we need real food?”

“No way!” Kili shouts from the tent.

“Well, if you’re sure…” Dis shakes her head. She turns to Kili. “That’s quite a tent you have there. Is there any room for me?”

“No adults allowed,” Kili scolds, his eyebrows dropping low over his eyes.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes,” Kili says. 

“That’s not very nice,” Dis teases. 

Kili sticks his tongue out.

She leaves them with the instruction that if they need anything then they should come inside. And she does have some hot dogs should they decide to eat something that is not sugary. 

* * *

“That wasn’t scary,” Kili giggles when Fili finishes telling a ghost story.

“You looked pretty scared.”

“Nuh-uh,” Kili rolls onto his stomach. Leaves are caught in his hair.

It had gotten dark hours ago. The yard by the house is lit by the back porch light that their mother turned on when it got dark. They had played some games before settling in to eat cookies and tell scary stories. Not that Kili thinks that Fili’s stories are scary.

“Then you tell one,” Fili challenges. He opens the container to get a cookie shaped like a pumpkin. It has black icing and green and purple sprinkles.

“I don’t know any good ones,” Kili protests. “Can’t you just tell a  _ scary  _ one that’s actually scary?”

Fili finishes his cookie and wipes his fingers on his jeans.

“I know one, but I think it’s too scary for you.”

Kili sits up, “It’s not!”

“You won’t be able to go to sleep if I tell it,” Fili says nonchalantly.

“Will so!”

“Hmmm… I don’t think so,” Fili says.

“C’mon, Fee! I won’t be scared! Promise!” Kili draws an “x” over his heart. “I promise! I double promise!” Kili continues when Fili does not say anything.

“Oh, alright, I  _ guess  _ I can tell it.” Fili’s eyes crinkle with a suppressed smile.

“You’ll see! I won’t be scared!” Kili bounces and scoots closer to Fili. “Is it a ghost story?”

“Nope,” Fili says, popping the “p.”

“What kind of story is it?” Kili pesters.

Fili gets up to put another log onto the little fire that is little more than glowing coals at this point.

“A scary one,” Fili answers with wide eyes. He sits back down next to Kili. The earth is damp beneath his jeans, but he is warm enough that he does not care. He wipes his hands on his pants. “Are you ready?”

“ _ Yes!”  _

“Okay. If you’re sure…” Fili trails off watching the excitement on Kili’s face grow. 

He takes a deep breath. “In one of those big cities far away from here there was a barber—”

“A barber?” Kili says incredulously. “That’s not very scary. Can’t he be a gravedigger?”

Fili frowns. “Do you want me to tell the story?”

“Yes.”

“Then he’s a barber,” Fili says sternly. Fili starts the story over. “In a big city far away from here was a barber,” he looks pointedly at Kili daring him to interrupt again, “and he lived with his wife and baby. He was a very good barber and his wife was very beautiful, everyone said so. People wondered if his daughter would be as beautiful when she grew up.”

“The barber loved his wife for more than just her beauty. And because of that he didn’t notice how other people looked at her. And there was one man who thought that she was so beautiful that she should be  _ his  _ wife instead. So he had the barber arrested and sent far away for a crime that he didn’t do.

“Many years later the barber comes home and he finds his house empty. His wife and daughter are not there. He finds out from a neighbor what happened. He learns why he was arrested. And he becomes very angry.”

“I would be angry, too!” Kili interrupts. 

Fili nods and continues. “He wants revenge. He wants to kill the man that sent him away and stole his family. But he can’t do that right away. He has no money and no way of doing it right then. So he reopens his barbershop. Here barbers only cut hair, but in this city they would also pull teeth if you had a rotten one. So they were a little like a doctor.

“Now his neighbor has a problem. She runs a pie shop and she cannot afford meat to put in her pies. So the barber starts killing one client here and one client there so that she can have meat.”

Kili shudders. “Did people actually eat those?”

“They loved them!” Fili confirms. “There would be a line out the door of her shop and the barber had to kill even more people. But he had plenty of customers because people buying the pies would stop in to get a haircut while they were waiting.”

“But… That’s gross.”

Fili nods. “It is, but it worked. He had plenty of clients and plenty of money and his neighbor had plenty of customers and plenty of money.”

“Does he ever get his revenge?” Kili asks.

“He does. One day the man who had stolen the barber’s family comes to the pie shop because he’s heard so many wonderful things about it. The line is very long and he needs a shave as well. So he figures that he’ll get a shave and then maybe the line will be shorter, and even if it is not he’ll have taken care of an errand.”

Kili’s eyes are wide with expectation.

“He goes into the barber’s shop. The barber gives him a shave, but right before he leaves the barber kills him, cuts his throat with a razer. The barber takes the man’s body to his neighbor where they turn him into pies. And then they eat him.

“The end.”

“I think I’m done with stories, Fee,” Kili says quietly, his face is pale and looks a little green around the edges.

“Should we go to sleep then?”

Kili nods.

“Alright, just let me put out the fire.” Fili stands and feels around for the bucket of water he had set nearby. While Fili slowly pours water on the fire Kili crawls into the tent, carefully leaving his sneakers just outside the door, and turns on a battery powered lantern. Fili joins him and together they rustle around getting situated and burrowed into the blankets and pillows. 

Fili turns the lantern off and they lay in the dark. Fili stares at the fluttering fabric of the ceiling and, even though he knows that his story was just a story, startles at every unexpected noise. 

Kili’s small hand finds his beneath the blankets.

Fili gives Kili’s hand a comforting squeeze and closes his eyes to try and sleep. 

He is not sure how much time passes as Kili scoots closer and closer until he is pressed against Fili. 

“Fili,” Kili says quietly, his voice shaking.

“Yeah?”

“Can we sleep inside?”

Fili nods, “Yeah, we can do that.”

The two boys gather up pillows and blankets and make a mad dash to the back door leaving shoes to be retrieved and checked for spiders in the morning when the sun is up.

  
  
  



End file.
